


That One Where They're All In High School

by vtn



Category: Canadian Music RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-15
Updated: 2007-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-17 09:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU.  Everyone's in high school.  Chris and Matt and Holly are assigned to do a project together but Holly decides she should get Chris drunk instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That One Where They're All In High School

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://wtf27.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://wtf27.livejournal.com/)**wtf27** prompt #07, high school AU. (See, I wasn't just teasing you all by posting the table this morning!) This story ate my brain and I don't know how satisfied I am with it, but I'm glad to have it done and I think it worked out well enough. Hope you enjoy. Also, play 'spot the cameos'. And yes, they are all of legal age (18) in this!

Chris pushes his glasses up his nose and attempts to unscrew the cap from his beer bottle. It seems to be stuck there firmly, and he makes a little grunting noise like he's, you know, a Man and is Used To This.

"Need some help?" Holly reaches over the picnic table and pops the cap off with a tinny sound. Chris watches it spin until it stops on the table.

"Thanks." Fizz spills over Chris's hand as he wraps it around the neck of the bottle. "You know, I've never done this," he admits. A sinking feeling in his stomach tells him that being around Holly and being tactful are going to be mutually exclusive. "I was never into that scene. I felt like there were better ways to waste my time."

She rolls her eyes, but Chris is thinking it's the 'eh, whatever' sort of eye roll rather than the 'you are so immature' sort. "No, really? I'm telling you, you need to loosen up." Her eyes fluttering, she takes a swig of her own beer. The way her lips curve around the bottle's lip is pretty and so _distracting_ , but Chris still manages to pick up his bottle and drink.

He resists an urge to immediately spit at the unfamiliar taste. It's not horribly bad—not bad at all, actually, kind of sweet and _richer_ than he's used to liquids being, but there's just—he's still doing _drugs_ , and it's _illegal_ (for one more year, at least). And Holly's the only person he knows who has a fake ID, he thinks. He isn't supposed to known people like this. They're Other People's Friends, as far as he's been concerned before this point.

"So." She folds her hands under her chin. Her right pinky nail has a butterfly painted on it. "History project, huh?"

"Huh." Honestly, the history project has been so far out of his mind since Holly grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of the school. "Are we like, going to get drunk and talk about homework?" It isn't exactly Chris's idea of a date, except that he's never been on a date (he's only had some quick, messy fumbles in dark places, the kind that don't get talked about afterwards), and maybe this isn’t a date anyway. He's still hazy on that.

Holly only laughs. "Don't be ridiculous. Would I have plugged you with alcohol if I didn't think you had some interesting things to say? Boys are always so much more interesting when you knock them off their high horses." She takes another drink, licking a drip off her cheek and this reminds Chris that he actually has tasted alcohol before because when he blew Ryan Dahle in the handicapped stall, Ryan's hands were sticky with beer and Chris cleaned them with his tongue. It's weird how watching Holly drink reminds me of blowjobs and he distracts himself by thinking about gamboling fat ponies so that this all doesn't result in a, you know. A situation.

"What do you know about Matthew Good?" he asks and then gulps down another sip of his beer. He'd better be pretty drunk, he thinks, if he's going to start talking like a PI. "Anything? If he's in our group for the project, we're going to have to rope him in somehow."

Holly's eyes bug out and Chris is afraid she's going to spit out her drink, but she regains her composure.

"Fucking—yeah, I know him! As far as I can tell, it's pretty difficult to convince him to do anything that doesn't involve getting completely sloshed and fingering Jenny Connors."

"You know his girlfriend?"

"Yeah, she's my lab partner." She grimaces. "More boobs than brain, that one. Matt should dump that skank and get with a real woman. Like me."

"I thought only fat girls said that. Which, uh, you definitely aren't. Like, not at all." Chris rubs the back of his neck nervously and takes another sip. _It's the Chris Murphy Drinking Game!_ he thinks. _Whenever you say anything idiotic, take one sip. The easy way to drunkenness._ "The opposite, really."

"I'm going to assume that's a compliment. Thanks." Holly grins. "Look, that Matt Good is a bad seed. I think he only has about five words in his vocabulary."

"I have a huge vocabulary!" Chris blurts, the implications flooding in immediately afterward and making him blush.

"Oh, I bet that's not the only thing that's huge," Holly says with a wink. Chris cringes, but her smile is still wide and getting a little crooked. Apparently, this is what drunk girls act like. It's surprisingly like the way Chris acts most of the time.

"You know, I always kind of thought you were a lesbian," Chris said, once again speaking before thinking and shrinking himself even smaller. "Uh. I mean—"

"I'm bi," she says with a flippant toss of her hands.

"Me too!" Chris says brightly. _Er, damn_. His hormones are trying to kill him, he's pretty sure. Some kind of Darwinist thing where he's going to fail to be at all capable in front of any and every attractive person he sees so that way he'll never have to distribute his genes. Holly cocks her head, looking thoughtful.

"Really? Does that mean you'll make out with boys if I ask you to?"

"Isn't it guys who are supposed to ask bi girls that?"

"Yes. But still. I repeat the question."

Sighing, Chris answers, "I would really like to say 'no, and I'm offended you even asked,' but obviously I would." Surprisingly, Holly turns a little pink at this.

"If that's the case," she says shyly, "Then I'll kiss _you_ if you ask me to."

And that's _it_ ; Chris is _gone_. All hope of keeping an untainted psyche are out the window, and the beer is making him kind of weirdly sleepy-but-giddy, so he leans forward and asks, "Would now be a good time?"

"Mm." She leans forward and brushes her lips against his. Chris almost forgets to close his eyes because he's busy looking at the indentation between her nose and her upper lip—he knows what that's called, he swears he does, but the word is escaping him—and the way her bleach-blonde hair curls around her ears. By the time he remembers, she's already pulling away, smiling.

"That's weird, you know?"

"Weird?" Holly interrupts, indignant.

"No, no, you're not letting me finish! It's just, every other time I've kissed a girl, it's been one of those deep messy ones with tongue and smeared lip gloss everywhere and I'm like undoing her bra at the same time or my hands are in her pants and you know it's pretty nice to do like a normal relationship thing." Having finished his diatribe, Chris takes a deep breath followed by a long drink. The taste isn't weird at all anymore.

"Oh my god." Holly blinks and her hand clutches the picnic table. "I somehow ended up with the school slut." Chris must look hurt or something, because she quickly adds, "And oh my god, it's really kind of hot." She rubs at her eyes. "So, uh, I want juicy details now. What's the farthest you've ever gone? Like, I guess you've obviously been to third base, but have you ever hit any home runs?"

"I'm a hockey fan," Chris mutters, but he then grins and says, "Almost," which is definitely the intoxication talking. So this is being drunk, eh.

"How can you 'almost'?"

"You know Skye? Sweetnam?"

"The name's familiar." Holly makes the 'please go on' gesture.

"She's in my English class—well, she skips my English class, mostly—and anyway she asked me to help her find that closet where they keep all the extra toilet paper." This is good. Chris feels like it's not really him talking anymore but someone more confident and less ridiculous. "And I showed her and then she started undoing my pants and saying she had condoms in her bag and I was like, oh wow, I am actually getting laid—except not really laid because we were standing up, but anyway, she was talking dirty to me and putting the condom on me and I, like, pushed up her skirt and everything and was going to try and figure it out—figure sex out in five seconds but I guess I got too excited because I didn't. You know. Get all the way in there." Sweating cold, Chris laughs nervously. "Only part." Holly looks as sympathetically embarrassed as Chris feels, which is a good sign.

"Oh, wow. That blows. You know, I had an 'almost' once, but we didn't even get past hands-under-shirt because his parents came home. It was okay, though, because I was terrified." She looks down and then takes another drink. "Guys don't get scared like that, do you."

"Are you kidding? It's all terrifying. I guess not the same way, but come on, this stuff is all pretty scary. Like." He glances around nervously. "I have a crush on my best friend." And he doesn't know why he's telling Holly this, but it's too late to take it back now. Just kidding? "A big one. The kind where I can't stop writing bad poetry."

"Have you asked her—him?—if they like you back?" she says softly. "That's the hardest thing, I know."

"Him. And I haven't asked. I guess I wasn't sure if you're supposed to."

"I don't mean to pry, but is it Jay?" Chris hangs his head, defeated. He probably shows through like he's been Windexed. "He's sweet. I can see why you like him. Nice ass, too."

And how weird is that disconnect, because he's talking to a girl he likes about a boy he likes and being able to like the girl at the same time? Is this what George Orwell was going on about with that whole 'doublethink' thing? _1984_ is starting to make so much more sense, now.

"Come here," she says, and Chris walks around the bench. Before he knows it, he's wrapped in her arms and she's combing her fingers through his hair. "There, there," she croons, like she's playing some sort of twisted mother figure in some Oedipal thing, except Chris guesses Holly is one of those girls who's a huge sucker for boys who like boys and likes to be all nurturing to them.

Except with Chris she gets the added bonus where she can kiss his cheek. Yeah. Except for that.

"You guys have a thing? I didn't know you guys had a thing." And it's the infamous Matt Good on the other side of the table, familiar blank expression on his face. Not stupid blank; 'I could do just fine with somewhere else especially since half my mind already is' blank.

"Matt," Holly says flatly, patting Chris on the shoulder and shimmying out from under him where he's sitting on her lap to take another drink.

"I'm sorry about before. It turns out Jenny's family were going out to dinner, so we couldn't do anything and I figured I'd try and find you two."

"Good for Jenny." Holly rolls her eyes with a laugh and Chris sees where she's coming from; Matt's apology sounds several notches short of sincere.

"So, history project," Matt intones. He looks up at Chris through shaggy bangs and Chris catches a brief glimpse of grey-ringed, bloodshot eyes. Sleepless eyes. They'd be nice eyes if they didn't look like they'd been manhandled.

And damn, Chris is willing to blame everything on the fact that he is more than tipsy if it means he won't be held responsible for the fact that there is more that's nice about Matt Good than just his eyes.

Holly starts, "We're studying the history of—the history of—I have no fucking idea what joke to make here because I am hammered." She dissolves into giggles and sort of falls into Chris's arms, cooing.

"Um," says Chris, and Matt folds his arms, looking expectant.

"I definitely didn't come here to watch you two make out," he says, pushing his own glasses up the way Chris is always having to do. He's glad he's not the only one. Now if Matt would just—

Chris, on impulse, takes off Matt's glasses.

"What the fuck!" Matt lunges out in front of him. "In case you didn't notice, I'm kind of blind without those!" Chris pockets the glasses while Holly drinks and giggles. Rather than listening to Matt ranting about how "You two shit-for-brains are going to make a mess out of everything and I can't believe you even once got pissed at me, never mind all the things I'm sure you said while I was out" and so on, he just says:

"You have really nice eyes." Matt blinks.

"Are you hitting on me?"

"A novel experience, isn't it?" Holly puts in, stumbling over to lean on Chris and breathe on his neck. "Hey, he's, he's right, though." She tries to steady herself. "You do have nice eyes. You know, if you kiss Chris, I'll kiss you."

("Is this always your pick-up line?" Chris mutters, to a snap of "Yes," from Holly.)

"You'll kiss me? Oh wow, what an honor." Matt's voice oozes with sarcasm. "How exciting. As if I couldn't get a kiss from my actual steady girlfriend, something which seems to be beyond you two's— _mmf_ " and that last sound, if you haven't already figured out, is from Chris kissing Matt, which Chris would have immediately felt really awful about except that Matt's kissing back, grabbing a handful of Chris's hair and shoving his tongue into Chris's mouth.

"Um," says Holly. "Oh."

"You don't need to kiss me," says Matt after he pulls away and affectionately musses Chris's hair up. "Can I have my glasses back, though? Please?"

"Are you drunk too?" is what Chris finds himself saying.

"Of course I'm not, you moron," Matt says before grabbing Chris's bottle. Seeing that there's scarcely a drop left in it, he scowls. "That's the whole problem."

Holly wipes her mouth on her sleeve and braces herself against the picnic table with one hand. "Actually," she says, "I think I would like that kiss anyway."

Matt grins and pulls Holly in close to him, long fingers pressing into the back of her shirt as he kisses her. Chris feels inappropriate watching it, like he should back off, but then Holly was watching Matt kiss _him_ so this is his retribution.

This much is obvious: Matt has done this before. In fact, Chris gets the impression that Matt has done just about anything before. Holly comes away from the kiss giggling and blushing and nuzzling into Matt's neck and that's when Chris can't watch anymore. He sits down on a stump and digs the toes of his shoes into the damp grass, his head in his hands.

It's happened before. He and the sharply beautiful Chantal Kreviazuk (he knows her from when she was assigned to his math class in grade nine for a week before she got her schedule sorted out and could be moved two levels up where she belonged) were talking on a field trip and everything was going well when Raine Maida (his name's really Michael but he acts like he's so exotic; stupid, stupid Raine Maida) got into a conversation with her about the Tibetan Book of the Dead and that was it for Chris.

At least that time it wasn't both Chantal _and_ Raine he was attracted to. Now he's watching his two best chances walk away together. (Okay, they're not actually walking away; they're sitting at a picnic table talking, but they're _metaphorically_ walking away.) Maybe he should just leave now. He still has Jay, after all, even though God knows when he's actually going to say anything to Jay.

Or maybe—maybe he doesn't have to lose this chance. Holly was interested in him. Matt was interested in him. He's just going to have to be assertive.

He pushes his glasses up. He pushes his glasses down. He takes his glasses _off_ but then he can't _see_ so he puts them back on again.

"Holly! Matt!"

Two heads look up.

"I was wondering what had happened to you," says Holly. "Matt has a car and he says he'll drive us both over to his place so we can work on the project."

"We're actually going to work on the project?" Chris raises his eyebrows, then thinks about how he can delicately phrase his next question before it all starts spilling out of his mouth anyway. "I was going to ask you guys if—"

"Also, I have condoms," says Matt.

Chris can't see himself, obviously, but he's fairly sure he's bright red. Holly looks a little flustered too, but she bites her lip.

"And I like you a lot, Chris," Matt continues. "Just because I'll make out with Holly doesn't mean I'm ignoring you for her. I keep seeing you in class and thinking if I ever got the chance I'd talk to you, but then I never did. But now Jenny and I are taking a break. And you're really hot. Not only that, but I heard you write songs."

"Shitty songs," Chris mumbles. (They're taking a break? Aren't they attached at the hip? Not that Chris is complaining.)

"I don't care how shitty they are; I want to find someone to be in a band with. I'm taking up guitar. I want to get out of here."

"I write songs too," says Holly. "Do you have a guitar at your house? I can play them for you."

"That would be great." Matt smiles.

"Are you…smiling?" Chris asks. Matt punches Chris in the side, then smiles wider.

Then Chris sweeps all the empty bottles into a trash can and they head toward the car.


End file.
